Blog archives for August, 2002

In the heat of the south, I can only run in the early morning. Therefore, I get up about 5:00 am to run on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. I always enjoy running in the dark as the sky slowly starts to lighten and the stars fade toward dawn. There is something like rebirth about seeing a new day start. After my run, I feel the alive and energized and renewed. Putting those two together makes my morning runs very enjoyable

Wednesday (2 days ago) while on my run, I noticed Orion on the sky. But wait, Orion is a winter constellation. I only see it when it is cold. It makes me think about fall and winter. Does that mean fall is on its way. Orion is already up in the early morning (5:00 am) and is slowly working its way across the sky so that it can be seen earlier and earlier.

Like our ancestors before, I felt like I had witnessed a heavenly sign that the seasons are about to change. It does not help that I had just read Jen’s blog entry about her feeling the seasons about to change. I know that it will still be hot for some time to come, but the fall is slowly creeping across the sky toward us.

The cruise/tour to Alaska was everything we thought it would be and more. It was most definitely the best vacation Denise and I have ever taken. So much so that we have already started dreaming about taking another cruise in a few years (maybe after Alana is through college).

I’ve also decided to upload these articles on my web page and add a link to the blog template so they will be easier to access in the future. Over time I may add more pictures (now that I have all the film pictures developed $$$). I’ll post links in my blog if I make major updates to any of the entries.

I hope you have enjoyed vicariously taking the along cruise with us. If any of you decide to take such a trip, feel free to ask loads of questions and I’d be happy to share a look at any of the other 200+ pictures that I did not post to this blog.

We disembark today. Our vacation is almost over. We sat our luggage outside our stateroom before 6:45am and leave for breakfast about 7:00am. After breakfast, we went to the Piano bar to wait for our bus to the airport. To facilitate orderly disembarkment, the passengers were being called in the order of the times of their airline flights. After a short wait, our number was called and we headed for the exit. As was fitting, we passed Fran, Suzie, Ben, and Bruce as we left the ship (we had met them on our journey to Alaska, and we left them on our journey home). After a final bus trip to the airport, we claimed our luggage and proceeded to check-in. Inside the airport were several LONG lines. Denise went and found the American Air queue which was much shorter. After answering all the security questions and checking in, our luggage was tagged but given back to us. We had to take it through customs before we could put it in the luggage handling system. Since we had just arrived in Canada and were headed for a US city, we had to officially enter Canada and leave it in the airport. We also had to declare anything we had bought during our stay in Canada (all of an hour, in line), stand in line to purchase a Vancouver Airport Improvement Fee certificate and then stand in another line to give somebody our Vancouver Airport Improvement Fee certificate, stand an a line to have our passports checked, stand in another line to go through security, and then FINALLY walk to the international concourse to find our flight. All that took almost 3 hours.

grabbing a snack and spending the last of the Canadian money we had brought, we sat down at our departure gate to wait for our flight. We flew to St. Louis where we changed planes and then on to RDU. Neither Denise nor I were “randomly selected” on the return trip. Denise’s dad was circling the airport waiting for us. A short trip back to Cary and our adventure was over. Now we just have to unpack, wash clothes, and go back to work tomorrow. Back to the real world — bummer!